Pope Francis was set to meet Holocaust survivors at the former Auschwitz death camp in Poland Friday, as well as people who risked their lives to save Jews from the Nazis.
The Argentine will lead prayers for the 1.1 million mostly Jewish victims and has said that rather than making a speech he will stand in silent contemplation of the horrors committed and let his tears flow.
As he arrived on Wednesday in Poland — the heartland of Nazi Germany’s World War II atrocities — the pontiff warned that the world had been plunged into a piecemeal Third World War
He has repeatedly denounced those committing crimes in the name of religion, after Europe suffered a string of deadly jihadist attacks.
Francis will walk through the notorious “Arbeit Macht Frei” (Work Sets You Free) gate at Auschwitz, before meeting the survivors in front of the death wall where the Nazis summarily shot thousands of inmates.
The pontiff, who has forged ever-closer ties between the Catholic Church and Jews since his election in 2013, will meet 12 survivors, including a 101-year-old woman, at the site which is now a memorial and museum.
He will pray in the cell where Polish priest and saint Maximilian Kolbe died after taking the place of a condemned man.
The visit falls on the 75th anniversary of the day Kolbe was sentenced to death.
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